Breton Language Maintenance and Regeneration in Regional Education Policy
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Chapter 6 Breton Language Maintenance and Regeneration in Regional Education Policy TADHG 6 hlFEARNAIN Introduction While the number of Breton speakers continues to decline, there are at last incipient signs that loss is now showing signs of reversal and a new dynamic in favour of the language is becoming established. This chapter focuses on aspects of the intergenerational transmission of Breton and the production of new speakers in the context of Brittany's Regional Council Language Policy. It considers specific complexities of Breton language revival, particularly the critical impact of the division between traditional and revivalist Breton, and the experiences of a generation of Breton language activists who are at the forefront of attitude shift and language regeneration in Brittany in mediating between the two varieties. Breton is an Insular Celtic language, spoken in France, closely related to Cornish and Welsh, though not intercomprehensible with them in the modern period. Breton was probably never spoken as a community language in the east of Brittany. Gallo is spoken there, a language derived from Low Latin in parallel to the other langue d' oil varieties from which modern French emerged. Both Breton and Gallo are now minority languages spoken by bilinguals. Despite centuries of marginalisation and official suppression, particularly since the French Revolution (Broudic, 1995; Lachuer, 1998), Breton was still a majority language in western Brittany in the first half of the 20th century but went into rapid decline after the end of World War Il, Particularly since the 1980s, France has gradually become more tolerant of its linguistic minorities in the educational and cultural spheres (see Oakes, Chapter 5, this volume) but has taken few concrete steps to redevelop the languages. The work of language activists during the periods of intolerance and minoritisation 93 94 Part 2: Language Policy in Practice has, however, recently been supplemented by language promotion policies by local and regional administrations, particularly in Brittany. The chapter is also illustrated by data from semi-structured interviews carried out individually and in small groups in autumn 2009, with 17 informants whose primary professional work is with the Breton lan- guage.1 All those interviewed are in the age group 29-45 and work as primary or secondary school teachers, in language development agencies, in the media or in music and entertainment. All live in the historically Breton-speaking part of the Department of the Cotes d' Armor. Inter- viewees were specifically chosen because they were brought up speaking Breton themselves in an area where Breton was spoken traditionally or had learnt Breton from their immediate family and neighbours in childhood. The one exception had learnt Breton at a later stage but was well integrated with people of that profile, and their partner also had such a background. Breton language professionals with such a personal history offer particularly valuable insights into the nature and potential of language policy as many of them are employed by public agencies (or those in receipt of public money) but have themselves come from a language activist background which has often positioned itself as a form of resistance to the dynamics of the state. As all also had higher education in Breton, entailing the learning of reading, writing and speaking of a 'literary' or 'standardised' form which they use, to some extent, themselves, they are also well aware of the often-posited divide between traditional Breton and that of the revival movement, the latter caricatured in academic studies as a synthetic variety (LeDu, 1997)or a variety which is redundant for older traditional speakers (Jones, 1998b:134). Our sample of Breton language professionals is particularly useful since it aligns well with the new image Breton speakers enjoy in the public mind, promoted by the media, which reflects the energy of those engaged in the promotion of the language and cultural activities. As Broudic (2009: 88) notes, most of these media-friendly people live in urban centres spread throughout Brittany, are responsible for bilingual schools and evening classes, are publishers and singers, are theatre performers, speak on the radio and appear on television and in news- papers. But he cautions that this image does not correspond to the most common profile of the Breton speaker which emerged from the major 2007survey conducted by TMO-Regions (Broudic, 2009).That speaker is most likely a married woman over 60 years with no formal education, living in a small rural community. The participants in this study lie somewhere between these sociolinguistic poles and have a part in both realities, if two realities do exist. Breton Language Maintenance 95 The Geographical and Social Demography of Breton It is usual in sociolinguistic descriptions of Brittany to refer to traditionally Breton-speaking Lower Brittany (BreizhIzel/Basse Bretagne) in the west and to Gallo and French-speaking Upper Brittany (Breizh Uhel/Haute Bretagne) in the east (see Figure 6.1). Loth (1883) considered that Breton was spoken as the community language around the 9th century west of a line which ran approximately from the border with Normandy at Mont Saint Michel southwards to the River Loire at a point near Saint Nazaire. By early modem times, the Breton-speaking area was probably further west, more or less where Sebillot (1886)identified its boundary as a line from Plouha in the north to a point on the southern coast east of the city of Vannes. Timm (1983) reinvestigated the extent to which Breton was spoken along Sebillot's line in 1976 and described Breton surviving in islands in a widening sea of 9th Century (Loth) 19th Century (Sebillot) Department boundaries Figure 6.1 Brittany:Modem department boundaries and historical linguistic frontier 96 Part 2: Language Policy in Practice French speakers. She suggests that this interpretation still holds but should better be conceptualised not geographically but as social net- works or communities of practice (Timm, 2009: 716). While numerically strongest in the Finistere department, Broudic (2007, 2009) highlights concentrations of speakers, particularly in rural communes with small populations in the Tregor region in the Cotes d' Armor, in Central Brittany from around Callac in the Cotes d' Armor to Carhaix in Finistere, with some pockets of strength in Cap Sizun and the southern coastal Bigouden country in Pinistere. Although one should now be cautious about defining a linguistic boundary, there is no doubt from the survey data available in the last 15years that Breton is still much more present west ofSebillot's line than in the east and that 'traditional Breton' has some presence in all of the territory of Lower Brittany from areas where there are considerable numbers of speakers to others where the population still has a strong identification with a language that is now hardly spoken (LeCoadic, 1998). The most comprehensive studies on the numbers, profiles and practice of Breton speakers were carried out by TMO-Regions in 1997and 2007 at the behest of Fafich Broudic (1999,2009),with financial support from the Regional Council and some of the departments. The sampling technique (Broudic, 1999, 2009) has been shown to be statistically robust by independent large-scale surveying by national agencies in 1999 (Le Boette, 2003). The total number of people who claim an ability to speak Breton 'very well' or 'quite well' in the whole of Brittany in 2007is 206,000(5.5% of the population). The 1997 study found 246,000 speakers for Lower Brittany, but by 2007this figure had fallen to 182,000.Of these 172,000are over 15 years old (13%of the population), and a further 10,000are under 15 years and attend bilingual/immersion schools (Broudic, 2009).There are 22,500speakers in Upper Brittany, who all say they speak it 'very well' (1% of the population) and 1500 in bilingual schooling. While 13% of Lower Bretons claim to speak Breton, only 5% (67,000)speak it 'very well'. Inside Lower Brittany, the percentage of speakers is highest in the Cotes d' Armor (19%of the population, 7% speaking it very well), with 15% in Finistere (6%very well) and 8% in Morbihan (just 3% very well). Despite these low figures for ability, some 49% of the people of Lower Brittany claim to understand at least some Breton, something that reflects how recently the language was quite widely spoken and also an important fact for language policy managers to bear in mind with regard to linguistic heritage. The decline in speaker numbers from 1997 to 2007 can be almost entirely explained by cohort depletion due to natural death Breton Language Maintenance 97 (Broudic, 2009:71-76) and by a small amount of emigration. Ageing also explains the depletion in each age cohort between 20 and 74 years, together representing a loss of almost half the proportion in each cohort in 10 years, as shown in Table 6.1. The most remarkable feature of this profile is that the number of speakers in the 15-19 age group has reversed the trend - with a quadrupling in only 10 years, albeit from a very small base. These young speakers are still small in number, but of these 9000 or so, three quarters claim to speak Breton 'very well', which is a higher proportion than any other age group, and 70% said that neither parent spoke Breton. This clearly demonstrates the emergence of a new group of speakers who have learnt Breton from the schooling system, which is not surprising, as all surveys have shown that intergenerational transmission of Breton has been declining very rapidly in each generation, especially in the last 50 years. One should, however, be cautious before concluding that the Breton spoken by the young is uniformly of a learner variety and that there has been a clean break with the traditional varieties.